


if the world's at large, why should i remain?

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, First Kiss, Fix-It, Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), M/M, Missing Scene, Sort Of, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers, minor rey negativity but poe does not actually resent rey and neither do i so never fear!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:15:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22156132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The aftermath of Finn and Poe's argument on the moon of Endor while the Falcon is being repaired.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 15
Kudos: 344





	if the world's at large, why should i remain?

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who's back after a year and a half of firmly believing I was done writing fanfiction!!! You're correct! It's me. And what should drag me back to it but Star Wars.
> 
> There were things I liked about TROS and things I didn't but I've been itching to write this missing scene since I saw the movie and I finally caved. So here it is! #Generals
> 
> As always I simply word-vomit and then post without checking for error so this might suck and there are definitely mistakes. Please forgive me.
> 
> Spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, obviously.

_You don’t know what she’s going through. But I do. And so does Leia._

Poe braced himself on the tilted floor of the Falcon, the worn treads of his boots clinging as best they could to the dusty floor as he yanked a panel off the upper wall of the cockpit. A loose wire sprung forward and spat sparks at him, and he cursed, flinging the wall paneling away from him probably a little harder than was necessary, but he didn’t care. He was in a foul mood. 

The landing gear mechanisms were wired into the cockpit like everything else on the ship, and the circuit board for them was roasted almost beyond recognition. Rey probably could have fixed it if she was here. She wasn’t, of course. She was off doing her own thing, as usual: chasing her goals based on whims of intuition that she blamed on the Force, never bothering to even brief them with a game plan first. Never acting in the interests of the group. The past year might have been a lot easier, Poe griped, if Rey had been acting in the interests of the group instead of hiding in the forest, fighting toy robots and making things float as if it would help her defeat Kylo Ren. 

In the absence of their best mechanic, Jannah had gone to see if she could find a new circuit board among her own spare parts. Finn might had gone with her; Poe wasn’t sure. He might have already been going after Rey, taking another skimmer. Diving into the ocean and swimming there himself. He would, Poe mused bitterly. He cared about her that much. 

Poe wondered what that was like; to have someone love you that much that they’d go after you without a second thought. _Finn saved you from the First Order,_ his brain reminded him, but in the cold light of the afternoon’s events it seemed like small change. He couldn’t stop seeing the argument in his mind.

**_Well I’m not Leia!_ **

_That’s for damn sure._

Poe felt the pit of his stomach tie itself in knots thinking about those words, each one of them a blow to the chest. The naked defensiveness on Finn’s face, the open bitterness that Poe couldn’t be what they needed. That he couldn’t be better. That he couldn’t be Leia. 

Of fucking course he couldn’t be Leia, but it wasn’t like the reminder didn’t still sting. Poe had spent practically every day since birth idolizing that woman, trying to be more like her. Leia was what every leader should aspire to be: compassionate. Patient and understanding. A war-weathered veteran with a spine of steel and the willingness to take the right path rather than the easy path. None of that reflected in Poe. He could almost hear the late Admiral Holdo at his shoulder, calling him a hot-headed flyboy who ran everything he touched into the ground. Standing in the cockpit of his crashed ship, it was almost poetic.

Poe had always known he wasn’t enough for everyone, that it wasn’t enough for him to be the fanciest-flying pilot in the Resistance or the guy who’d found the map. In the end, he’d gotten captured. It was all Finn: Finn who had saved him, Finn who had found BB-8, Finn who’d confronted Ren on Starkiller Base and saved the Resistance while Poe just shot some guns. Finn had succeeded where Poe had failed, and Finn knew it. It was only a matter of time before that disdain finally surfaced, and now it had. Poe Dameron, failure of the Resistance, worshipping the General because he knew he could never be her. 

And now, of course, Finn’s primary objective was to go after Rey. Everything with Finn was always Rey. Taking her side on missions. Chasing her to distant planets and Starkiller Bases and beyond. Telling her things he didn’t want Poe to hear. Poe had long accepted that Finn would never love him the way he loved Rey, would never love Poe the way Poe had loved him since the day they’d broken out of prison together. It still hurt to be excluded. It wouldn’t ever stop hurting. Love was cruel like that. 

It wasn’t until his vision blurred and he shocked himself on a loose wire that Poe realized he was crying. Cursing, he yanked his hand out of the wall paneling, pulling a clean-ish rag from his belt to scrub at his face. He didn’t cry. Not over stuff like this. The grease stung a little bit, but he just scrubbed harder, shaking his head and huffing a deep breath before getting back to work. He had to fix the Falcon. That, at least, he could do. 

***

Finn bustled back towards the Falcon, a bundle of spare parts clutched in his hand and a plan already forming in his mind. Chewie would stay and help Poe fix the ship. Jannah would take Finn out on the other skimmer to the Death Star so he could find Rey and help her find the Wayfinder. Not that she couldn’t find it herself, of course, but she hadn’t been herself since they’d scooped her up from the hangar on Ren’s ship, and he was worried about her going after the artifact on her own. Not when she was so obviously shaken. Not when he felt the darkness surrounding the Wayfinder — and Rey’s own thoughts — as clearly as he did. 

Finn’s connection to the Force reared its head higher and higher as the days passed. Little things that could have been passed off as coincidences — opening a door without pressing a button, knowing who was coming down the hallway before he could see their face, dodging the lasers of enemy blasters — had begun to accumulate until he couldn’t ignore them anymore. The famed lightsaber of Luke Skywalker and his father before him (Leia had told him the full history of the weapon upon his recovery) as Finn had held it aloft on Takodana had fit better into his hands than a blaster ever had or ever would. Like it was an extension of his arm instead of a weapon. 

For the first time in his life since the day he’d rescued Poe, Finn had felt _powerful._

He wanted Rey to know. _Kriff,_ he wanted her to know so badly, that they shared this. That she wasn’t _alone._ He’d been ready to tell her in the Sinking Fields, reaching out for her as they slipped into the black sands, Poe too far away to reach and the blue sky receding above them. _Rey, I never got to tell you, I—_ Finn would remember the gritty taste of black sand and the all consuming dark until the end of his days. It had become a horrifically familiar sensation by then, the feeling of a near death experience, but this one had been different. All his friends around him, countless words unspoken and missions unfinished, everyone he held close to his heart within grasp but somehow just out of reach. It was the stuff out of his nightmares, and the relief he’d felt flooding through him when Poe had clutched at him in those dark tunnels could rival the strongest drugs on the market. 

Finn shook himself out of the spiral of his thoughts, the Falcon becoming visible far over the crest of the hill. Not only did he have a plan to outline, he also had an apology to make. 

His gut had felt permanently clenched since his and Poe’s argument on the cliffside. He couldn’t stop playing it over and over in his mind, like some sick film reel. The fear he felt inside him, for Rey and their mission and the fate of the entire kriffing galaxy. The words that had left his mouth before he could stop them, before he could even think. The look on Poe’s face, quietly devastated, like Finn had just punched him in the gut. 

The last thing he’d ever wanted was to hurt Poe like that. The last thing he needed was for them to leave things unsettled and simmering angry. What if one of them died — what if _Poe_ died, died thinking Finn thought so little of him?

Finn worried at the dead skin on his bottom lip. No, he couldn’t allow that to happen. 

He marched up the gangplank of the ship, nodding to Chewie as he passed the gunner seat on his way to the cockpit and dropping the parts Chewie needed. Finn was armed with confidence and a plan. He was ready.

Of course, the moment he saw Poe he faltered. It didn’t surprise him anymore at this point, how Poe shook Finn to the foundation like no one else. It’d been the same since they’d met. 

Poe didn’t look at him, still digging in the walls for loose wires. Finn set his bundle down gently. “Got the parts you needed,” he offered quietly. A small first attempt at a truce. 

“Great,” Poe bit out. “Thanks.”

“Need any help installing them?”

“Nope.” 

“Anything I can do?”

“Don’t you want to go chase after Rey? Oh, sorry. I wouldn’t get it, would I?” The last remark was practically spat, Poe’s shoulders shaking almost imperceptibly, his voice low and hollow.

Just about as easy as Finn thought it was going to be. His first instinct was to be annoyed at Poe for not even acknowledging that Finn was trying to make peace, and then Poe turned around to grab the parts and Finn caught a glimpse of his face. Poe had been crying. 

Something in Finn’s brain seized a little at that. He’d never seen Poe cry. Not after Starkiller when they’d returned without Han, not when all hope had been lost on Crait, not on any of their failed missions or upon news of lost comrades. Poe always reacted with action, with anger, with planning, but he never cried. The guilt settled deeper in Finn’s gut like a flat stone. 

He took a deep breath and said, “You asked what I wanted to tell Rey earlier.” 

Poe’s hands froze on the wiring. He didn’t say anything, but Finn took it as an indication to continue.

“I—“ He stopped, then took a deep breath and pushed forward. “I’m pretty sure I’m sensitive to the Force. Like, almost one hundred percent sure. I can — I can _feel_ things, sense them. Plants and animals, life forms. Things that are about to happen. People’s emotions.” He paused. “I know General Organa is too. She’s really powerful, more powerful than me and maybe even Rey. But I know what I feel. And I know it’s not something I’m making up in my head.”

He lowered his gaze, fiddling with his thumbs. “It didn’t need to be said that that kind of thing was a big deal in the First Order. If they ever sensed it, which happened once in a blue moon, you were branded a traitor and killed. Kylo Ren considered everyone except the Knights of Ren a threat to his power, and sometimes he’d even dispose of them if their abilities began to threaten his own. I think the only reason he never sensed me is because I wasn’t aware of it myself. I couldn’t even begin to fathom the possibility. So it lay dormant.”

Finn looked up to find Poe staring at him now, but he continued. “Poe, the Force is part of why I defected. First Order conditioning is strong as anything, but I’d felt it stirring: this _pull,_ this voice inside of me saying something wasn’t right. Telling me where to find that pilot. Telling me I could trust him to save us both where I couldn’t.” His hands trembled. “Even among the Resistance, I was so afraid to say anything. My whole life, it was this thing that could get me killed.”

He cleared his throat. “Anyway, so. That’s why I have to go after Rey. I can tell something’s wrong with her. Kylo Ren’s words shook her up bad, and the Wayfinder has dark powers we can’t possibly fathom. I’m worried things will take a turn for the worse if someone’s not there to guide her back to herself again.”

Poe still looked shocked, but something guarded in his expression had fallen away. After a beat of silence, Finn stepped forward. “And I’m sorry about what I said,” he finished. “I—” He felt his throat close up. “I didn’t mean it,” he forced out, his voice barely a whisper, and suddenly he couldn’t get Poe’s eyes anymore. “It was a terrible thing to say. You — you’re a brilliant fighter and a brilliant leader. And you’re a good friend,” he stumbled on that, “which matters more than anything else. I never wanted to hurt you, and I did. I’m sorry.”

Finn braced himself for more stony silence, and when it came he turned away in defeat. He was preparing himself to go crawl into the cargo hold and maybe have a good cry himself when he felt Poe’s hand on his shoulder. “Finn.” 

Finn turned and was immediately pulled into a hug. He felt the tension bleed out of his body, wrapping his arms around Poe’s waist as Poe tucked his face into the juncture between Finn’s neck and shoulder. They stood there in silence, but it was okay; Poe had never been the best with words, and Finn knew this was his way of forgiving and apologizing too. Finn closed his eyes, soaking in Poe’s smell, his warmth. 

“Thank you for trusting me,” Poe whispered, and at last they separated, standing face to face. His face held a kind of wonder. “Force sensitive, huh?”  


Finn shrugged. “Not sure what it means or how it’ll help us. But it’s something.” 

Poe nodded, and then tapped his feet twice on the ground. “Well, it might help you go after Rey,” he announced briskly, “so you should go before she gets too far. I’ll patch the ship up and come get you.”

Finn blinked and then nodded uncertainly as Poe turned away. Something still felt missing. He shivered, cold at the sudden absence of Poe’s warmth, and — _oh._

A promise he’d made to himself. No more words left unsaid. Not in times like these.

“Poe?” he asked, and Poe turned around.

“Yeah, buddy?” he said.

Finn scratched the back of his neck. “I, uh, I’ve been meaning to tell you— I mean, I—” he paused, his confidence failing him. He wasn’t sure how to proceed. 

Poe laughed, but it was strained. “You’ll tell me later?” His face was tight, nervous, but for some reason that only gave Finn a rush of confidence. 

He stepped forward and kissed Poe firmly, one hand coming up to cradle his jaw. Poe’s breath hitched sharply, but then he relaxed and leaned into it, and warmth flooded Finn’s whole body. Scratch holding that dumb lightsaber. Finn had never felt more powerful.

After another moment, he pulled away, beholding Poe’s flushed cheeks and grinning. “Just wanted to say,” he said, “that I’ll see you in a bit. And don’t you dare be late.”

Poe’s eyes widened, and he stammered nonsense for a moment before shaking his head and smiling. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” 

“Good.” Finn indulged himself, allowing himself to dart in and kiss Poe one more time before turning for the gangplank and not looking back. After all, they had a galaxy depending on them, and Finn had to go help his friend. His body thrummed with energy. He knew it wasn’t just the Force. 

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: galaxieswars


End file.
